So, The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins and the film version director Gary Ross were interviewed by Entertainment Weekly (or 'EWwwww', as I call them) about whether the sci-fi movie they're making will suck.
The movie version of The Hunger Games, which is a young adult (teenage) series of books about a young girl named Katniss (who will be played by Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence), and entails a huge Battle Royale-like fight-to-the-death-between-teenagers-with-weapons-in-a-futuristic-dystopia. Also starring are Josh Hutcherson as "Peeta" and Liam Hemsworth as "Gale".
Collins suggests that Ross has written a good script version of the first book in her series, with her help, and both of them inist that they've found "the arc" to the story, and how fantabulous that is, and how they high-five each other a lot in meetings.
Ross insults every writing partner he's ever had since 1984, "I really haven’t had a real writing partner since Anne Spielberg on Big, and I feel like I’ve found that wonderful collaborative electricity again," and spends a lot of time calling Collins "savvy" and "adroit" and other bourgeois nonsense, when the interviewer decided to be a journalist for once in their fucking entertainment-writing lives and ask a real question:
Quote:
EW mouthpiece: Some readers have expressed real frustration that white actors were cast in the roles of Katniss and Gale, who they felt were clearly described as biracial in the book. Do you understand or share any of that dismay Suzanne?
SC: They were not particularly intended to be biracial. It is a time period where hundreds of years have passed from now. There’s been a lot of ethnic mixing. But I think I describe them as having dark hair, grey eyes, and sort of olive skin. You know, we have hair and makeup. But then there are some characters in the book who are more specifically described.
GR: Thresh and Rue.
SC: They’re African-American.
So will those roles go to black actors?
GR: Thresh and Rue will be African-American. It’s a multi-racial culture and the film will reflect that. But I think Suzanne didn’t see a particular ethnicity to Gale and Katniss when she wrote it, and that’s something we’ve talked about a lot. She was very specific about the qualities that these characters have and who they are as people.
So, if Collins had no particular idea what Katniss looked like, why is she described as Katniss’s “olive skin” and “straight black hair'? That don't sound white, nosiree. What do I know, just picking cotton in this field? But it sounds like not whitey.
Which is weird because the auditions for Katniss clearly stated that only white actresses need apply.
Actresses "should be Caucasian, between ages 15 and 20, who could portray someone ‘underfed but strong,’ and ‘naturally pretty underneath her tomboyishness.’”
I personally am sick of looking at white people. Do you agree that actresses who were non-white should have been included in the audition, and that Ross and Collins have always been interested in casting a white actress?
Whitey
I'm far from sick of "looking at white people", but I do agree that actors should be correctly cast based upon the originating material. That really goes in all ways; if someone is written as white in the original, keep them white. If someone is written as purple, keep them purple.
It really isn't hard and I don't know why theatrical adaptations keep making this stupid mistake.
I made this website. I'm sorry.